


Hyoga Yukina and the Dementors of Azkaban

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Yu Yu Hakusho
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-13 18:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3391532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ekrizdis' Plague and his long-hidden laboratory have been a thorn in the side of Reikai for centuries.  With both hidden and access limited to high officials and criminals of a secret society in the human world, Reikai's been just waiting to get their hands on an agent who can use the only possible infiltration point.</p>
<p>And then the Plague is put to use as school guards.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>NOT part of the Best Defense/Good Offense series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was a perfectly ordinary Wednesday afternoon in the endless, timeless halls of Reikai. Sunny and dry, a little bit cold, but Koenma only knew that because -- barring outright attacks -- the weather was always like that over the desert palace at the edge of Heaven: he had not, in fact, seen daylight for... he wasn't sure. He could only really keep track of the days by his favorite shows, and the seasons by upticks in fetal soul deliveries -- it must be almost September by now, he could barely see the floor under the files for America, and damn their holiday season anyway...

An alarm he'd never heard went blaring, and he knocked a stack of completed files cascading over his head.

"Noooo!" he wailed, trying to swim out of the new mess. "No, I was done with you! Done! GEORGE! GEORGE GET IN HERE!" What the hell was that alarm even _for?_ "AND SOMEBODY TURN THAT NOISE OFF!" Unless it was an attack. Oh noooo what if it was an attack? Dad damn it!

The doors slammed open, thudding against the walls with a file-destroying crunch, and a reedy, excited voice he'd never heard before shrieked, "Koenma-sama it's our chance! A mass migration!"

He finally managed to pull himself out of his ruined paperwork and drag himself back onto his chair. The woman standing in the doorway was tiny and delicate for an oni, skin an ashy shade of pink over muscles that might only be able to bench-press Kuwabara. She was short enough that she wore a deerskin instead of a tigerskin for a dress, and her eyes were beady behind huge glasses. She was also nearly vibrating with eagerness.

Koenma wasn't entirely sure he recognized her. "And you are...?"

She huffed. "Martha, Biohazards and Research, European Division." Somewhere, someone blessedly turned off the weird alarm. "Fifty minutes ago, at dawn in the British Isles, we detected a mass migration of the Ekrizdis Plague onto the coast north of Aberdeen. Agent Nightshade went through the Veil and observed a memo that the creatures are being used as school guards until the capture of an escaped mass murderer." She caught a breath. "Sir, this is the best chance we've had in two hundred years!"

Oh. _That's_ what the alarm was. But the only possibility they had wasn't ready...

"And we only have four hours to get someone on the train!"

... _damn_ it.

Koenma dug out his phone and hit the intercom. "George, send Botan out to get Yukina. Twenty minutes. And get this place cleaned up!"

Twenty-five minutes later, after a veritable wave of office oni had swarmed through and carried off the piles of paperwork (hopefully never to be seen again, though Koenma didn't hold high hopes for that), Botan flew in through the open double doors with Yukina at her back and a green oni lugging a trunk under her feet.

"Ah, Yukina-san, glad you could make it," Koenma said cheerfully.

"Botan-san said it was urgent," Yukina murmured in reply, bowing. So much nicer to deal with than his loudmouth Reikai Tantei, Koenma thought. And much more honest than Kurama too. She wasn't going to smile and speak softly and slice-and-dice an enemy to bits at the best-not-first opportunity.

Which Koenma was not going to think about. He stifled a shiver and looked back at sweet, polite Yukina. "You're a Healer," he began flatly. "You cure diseases? Infections?"

She blinked. "... I suppose so, yes. People clean their blades," she explained, "but they almost never sterilize them, and they never sterilize inside the sheath, so you really have to kill the infection before you seal the wound or your patient just gets sick." She paused. "Why?"

"You're all I've got to handle the Ekrizdis Plague outbreak," Koenma answered with brutal honesty. It was so weird not to have to use threats and mind games: she really was the only one he could send. "We've got less than three hours to get you equipped and there, yes or no?"

"I... yes?"

"Good." Wonderful! Easy! Yukina was his favorite pawn -- er, tantei, yes, ahem, tantei -- now. "The trunk's yours, confidential files are in the pocket in the lid, Martha's got a language charm and Botan will take you for the last-minute stuff. Bye bye have fun don't come back until you've got them all eradicated or you've got a line into Azkaban!"

"What--?"

Trunk and tantei booted out the door, Koenma relaxed into his cushy chair, looked around the blissfully paperwork-free room, and grabbed the remote. Ahhh. Just in time for Baywatch.

 

-0-0-0

 

Yukina almost stumbled into the oni woman when the doors to Koenma's office slammed shut behind them.

"You get used to it," the oni -- Martha? -- told her kindly, hefting the oddly old-fashioned trunk up onto one pink shoulder. "It's all a bit of an emergency, though, so if you don't mind we need to get you kitted out and on your way quickly."

Yukina nodded, and -- although Martha tried to walk slow enough for her for a few steps -- trotted along at the oni's side until they reached a smaller office, this one dusty and cluttered with technological and scientific debris.

Martha thumped the trunk down, opened it, and pulled out a pile of black, gray, and distinctly not disease-resistant clothing which she handed to Yukina. "The Ekrizdis Plague has always been an undercover mission," she explained at Yukina's look. "It's under the control of a hidden society of humans in the United Kingdom. We've been waiting two hundred years to get someone capable of entering this society at the only possible infiltration point." She eyed Yukina's hair thoughtfully. "... It'll be easier to explain your hair as a childhood accident than to keep up on dying it to human-natural. Dress quickly, we have --" a glance at the clock, and Martha turned her back on Yukina, "-- two hours and twenty minutes to make the train."

As Yukina changed, draping her obi and kimono over a nearby chair with a wince at the mistreatment -- Western-style socks felt weird, and everything was somehow clingy and flimsy, and she was pretty sure the long black strip of fabric wasn't an oddly-shaped koshihimo to hold the overrobe closed and kilted up, so she left that aside -- Martha began explaining just what the plague and the mission was.

Ekrizdis had been a Dark sorcerer from a subset of magically-capable humans, about four hundred years ago, and somehow had created a semi-corporeal creature he called 'Dementors'. "They're filed as demons for legal purposes," Martha added, "but we're not really sure _what_ they are." Unlike an actual plague, they were macroscopic, human-sized in fact, and they didn't cause an inflammatory response or activate the human immune system. There were no fevers, no rise in white blood cell count, nothing biological to test for.

What they did do, however, was decimate the human body on a psychosomatic and psychological level. The damage they did to the human soul, even when they didn't get the chance to finish it off by consuming it -- the fate of everyone who died at this Azkaban place, as Reikai couldn't find it and so the ferrygirls couldn't reach the newly deceased souls there -- was enough to classify them all as irredeemable criminals by Reikai's laws.

"We need the things eliminated," Martha finished. "Moreover, we need a way to get to Azkaban to finish the job. And that's where you come in. They're weak to hellfire, to glacial cold, and to a particular silvery charm we've not yet identified. The charm doesn't destroy them, but it seems to give the victim some breathing room, if not chase them off completely. Try to find out what it is, but don't worry too much if you don't. We want the Plague destroyed, not run off to infest somewhere else."

"I understand." Yukina tied the laces of the ugly brown shoes she'd been given, swept the robe up over her shoulders, and stood with the black tie in one hand. "I'm ready."

Martha turned and eyed her consideringly, then bent and looped the tie into place -- oh, it went around the neck and under the shirt collar, like a salaryman's. "Hm. It makes you look younger than that kimono does," she admitted, "but you still look about human-thirteen to me, not eleven."

Yukina thought a moment, then pulled her hair loose and retied it into low pigtails.

"Better." Martha handed her a small box, which Yukina opened to find a silver locket inside. "Translation spell. Don't put it on until you reach England, you won't be able to speak Japanese while wearing it. There's an emergency contact mirror inside, it'll only work for you and will set off alarms here, so only use it if you're about to blow your cover and need to get out."

The locket's filigree bit into Yukina's palm as her grip tightened around it. "I'll do my best to not need it," she said quietly.

"See that you don't." Martha met her eyes. "The only people with the ability to go to Azkaban are high Ministry officials. That's your career path. You have to kill the Dementors at the school too, but you must - not - get - caught."

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. I'll see you hopefully in a few decades, Hyoga no Yukina."

Yukina bowed deeply, grabbed up the trunk, and left.

 

-0-0-0

 

Botan angled left into the sky, rather than right, after they left the palace, and when the yellow-tinged clouds gave way to white, the scent of car exhaust was tinged with that of a slightly different climate. Less salt and fewer mountain forests.

The city sprawling below also looked little like Tokyo, though Yukina couldn't pinpoint any one aspect to make it seem so. And then Botan banked north and dived, and Yukina was too busy clinging to the ferrygirl to see exactly where they went. They landed, though, in a narrow gap between two rickety half-timbered buildings, the plaster between the heavy beams so worn and stained that it was nearly indistinguishable from the ancient wood. There were cobblestones underfoot, rounded as river rock and fairly even for what they were.

"Welcome to _Daiagan Ari_ ," Botan said, stumbling a little bit over the foreign word. "It's," she checked her watch, "8:40 local time. You need the first year Defense book and a wand, and I'll be waiting here with your trunk." She passed over a small money pouch. "Be back by 10:30, okay? And don't forget your necklace!"

Yukina nodded, put on the necklace, and headed out into the Alley.

She found the bookstore, Flourish and Blotts', first. Inside was piled high with dusty and musty books, in no order Yukina could see; books covered in leather and books in cloth, stacks of books the size of Yukina's torso, an entire bin of books the size of her fingertip; a flock of books floating lazily high in the smoky rafters, flapping their covers whenever they got too close to a beam; narrow aisles between stacks that looked like they might well prefer to eat people than be read by them... and off to one side, between the shop window and a fireplace, there was a countertop with a tall wizard drinking coffee.

"Excuse me..."

The wizard blinked, then glanced down at her over the rim of his mug. "Huh. Shopping a bit late, aren't you?"

Apparently so. Yukina thought quickly. "My mother couldn't get the time off work," she murmured, letting her gaze fall to the countertop. "I've... got almost everything in hand-me-downs, I mean, so it's okay, but," and she glanced back up again, finding the man had a painfully pitying look on his face, "Do you have any more of the first-year Defense book?"

"Aw, kid, of course I do. Last one in the shop," he added, as he pulled a plain brown book out from under the counter. "You're lucky this year, looks like you've got someone who knows penny-pinching," he added as he put it into a paper bag for her. "One of the best beginner's texts, and definitely the cheapest. Last year you would've had the full Lockhart, poor man. Here you go, sweetheart. One Galleon."

She had nothing but gold coins in the pouch, nine of them, and the shopkeeper accepted one. So those must be Galleons. Yukina tucked the money pouch away, headed outside, and checked her watch. 16:56, subtract eight for time zone, 8:56 and she'd have to remember to reset the clock when she had the chance.

Now for a wand. Yukina went further down the street, checking each shop as she passed. Wand... wand... wand... ah! Very nearly at the end of the road, a shabby little sign read _Ollivander's: Fine Wands Since 382 B.C._ in peeling gold paint. And although she could tell that the shop had the same footprint as Flourish and Blotts' -- as did most of the other shops she'd passed -- and the window held only a single wand on a faded purple pillow instead of a veritable library of flashy books, Ollivander's somehow looked considerably smaller than the bookstore.

It felt much smaller, too, when Yukina stepped inside. Thousands of narrow boxes lay piled to the ceiling, leaving just enough space for perhaps three or four people and a sturdy wooden chair, and every single box was some shade of gray from a thin layer of dust.

"Ah, welcome," came a raspy voice from the shadows, and the only reason Yukina didn't startle was long habit. Out stepped an old man with eyes as colorless as moonlight. "And here I'd thought I'd seen all my new customers for the year. How curious."

"I'm afraid I'm running late," Yukina replied, apologetic.

"I think not," the old man murmured, mostly to himself. "Ah. Short on time we are, though. Which is your wand hand, miss...?"

"Yukina Hyoga." She held out her right hand. "My writing hand, I suppose?"

"Indeed." And he caught up a tape measure and went into a well-practiced spiel as it jumped around Yukina in mid-air, measuring in increasingly random spots: her hand, of course, and wrist and arm, but also the meager breadth of her shoulders, down her tear track, and it stretched between her nostrils by the time he got done describing presumably-quality wand cores and craftsmanship and plucked the tape back out of the air. He then pulled a box from the nearest shelf and offered the contents to her. "Unicorn hair for you, obviously, and beech, nine and a half inches. Go on, give it a wave."

Tentatively, Yukina did so, and a blast of ice shattered out the windows (so _that_ was why he was at the very end of the street). Ollivander snatched the wand from her fingers only to replace it immediately with another. "Unicorn and pine, a tad over nine inches."

The chair in the corner crumpled like origami in the hands of a wet giant.

"Hm, not pine... perhaps fir? Odd if it is--" A wave knocked down an entire tower of boxed wands. "No, that's the wrong way entirely. Not apple, not larch... Maple, eleven inches--" That wand seemed almost to buff itself to a bright polish in Yukina's grip, but not a single spark came out. "-- no. I wonder... here. Alder, eleven and just under a quarter inches, unyielding."

Yukina waved the wand politely, and a trail of shimmering, delicate frost bells came chiming out in its wake.

"An excellent match, 'young Miss Hyoga'. And, as always with alder, a fascinating one." Ollivander's eyes shone with the peculiar feverishness of a fanatic, which looked surprisingly like Kazuma when he was talking about how wonderful Yukina was or how he was going to eventually win against Hiei. "You see, Miss Hyoga, while alder itself is a hard wood that never creates any sort of flexible wand, it is a unique wood in that it always chooses an owner of considerate or obliging nature-- alder makes for a wand that always pairs with its opposite in some form or other. It also lends itself quite strongly to protective and non-verbal magics, though this one won't so aggressively due to having a unicorn core." He hummed thoughtfully. "I believe we shall see good things from you, Miss Hyoga. Perhaps not great, perhaps not newsworthy, but _far_ more than mediocre," he finished with a long, ominously knowing pause. Then, "That'll be seven Galleons."

 

-0-0-0

 

The train was charming, a red-painted engine and brass fittings everywhere, each car divided into a line of individual compartments of upholstered benches. It was very little like the sleek, minimalist trains Yukina was used to, with their individual seats in three-and-three rows, vending machines every few cars, and scrolling lightboards of announcements over every door.

Botan dropped her off in the aisle of the last car, which was empty for the moment. "Do your best, okay?" she said, still perched on her oar. "And don't forget to write. I'm sure they have some sort of mail system, and everyone's going to want letters." She paused. "Well, Kuwabara and Hiei will. And us girls, of course! Maybe Kurama. Oh, but don't bother writing Koenma, he doesn't deserve it." With a shift in posture, she darted back through the train car's wall, leaving only a cheerful "See you in June!" echoing in her wake.

And just like that, Yukina was alone, with only her luggage and a view of the thickening crowds on the platform.

_Never take the first seats_ , Hiei had said once, on one of the rare occasions he actually came down to have tea instead of lurking in the treetops across the garden (or the telephone poles downtown where there were no trees) like the wary demon he was. _They're the first to get picked off. The middle's no good either, unless you're surrounded by people you trust; you don't want enemies on all sides. Always put something locked or solid at your back._ When Yukina had glanced pointedly up at his favorite pine, empty air all around, he'd snorted. _Or take the high ground. It's always harder to shoot up._

The last compartment had its door closed already, and inside a shabbily-dressed man far too old to be a student lay sleeping against the window. She'd have to take the next-to-last, then.

Yukina closed and locked the door, frosted up the windows, and dug the confidential files out of the promised hidden pocket in the lid of her trunk. Soon enough, she'd immersed herself in the background information of the mission, and barely noticed when the train whistle blew and they lurched into motion.

Hours passed. The sky clouded, darkened, and eventually turned to rain over the long afternoon as they chugged slowly north, with the only interruption coming when someone knocked on her door and a matronly witch offered her 'something off the trolley'. Yukina bought a couple of Pumpkin Pasties and a Cauldron Cake, finding the pasties were sweet and spiced rather than anything properly lunch-like, and the cake was chocolate with a sticky raspberry filling that glowed a sullen berry pink. She drank most of the sweetness away with a small bowl of ice water, let the paper-thin bowl melt to rinse off her hands, and dried them with a handkerchief before returning to the files.

Whatever else this Ekrizdis had been, he'd been a monster beyond Yukina's comprehension. The information on Dementors was slim -- what they'd been before he created or found them, how they were bound to Azkaban, _if_ they were bound to Azkaban -- since he'd somehow locked all that information into his soul. Reikai's scientists had been working for centuries trying to pick the lock without mutilating the remains any further. 

How could someone _do_ that to themselves?

She drank a little more water to settle her stomach, and, suddenly, all the lights went out and the train lurched to a halt.

Yukina wiped a hand across the outside window, peering out into the featureless countryside. There, barely visible in the dimness and the driving rain, hooded and cloaked figures were getting aboard the train.

Thumping and squeals came from the other compartments as Yukina drew the rest of her frost off the windows and stowed the files away. Had they reached the school, then? Were these teachers, come down to keep the students from getting lost in the dark? Or had something gone wrong with the train, wrong enough to need to summon engineers or arrange a transfer to other transport?

Yukina shivered.

... She shouldn't be able to feel cold.

Ekrizdis' Plague.

Once, not so long ago, she'd forgotten how to cry. Only it hadn't been forgetting, so much as it had been a deliberate imitation turned natural... the Koorime of Hyoga were all dead inside, every warm feeling and thought sliced brutally, deliberately away.

Yukina pulled that habit, that cheap imitation of her species' maturity, over her like a cloak, the Void welling up from her magical core and leaving nothing but absolute zero behind. Then she stood and stepped to the door, pushing the trunk she'd left on the floor behind her, and waited.

Ragged gossamer in the air. Soft crying and the crackle of frost creeping across glass. A door opened with a whisper of metal wheels... a door opened with a whisper of metal wheels... a door opened--

A light sting zipped across Yukina's left cheek. A moment later, her fingertips warmed unnaturally. Then a line thickened around her neck, her breath catching just a little bit in her throat. _Ah. Memories of Tarukane_ , she thought distantly. _That will be a problem._

Her door opened with a whisper of metal wheels, and Yukina got her first look at the Plague.

It was vaguely human-shaped: a smoky, ragged shroud over the scent of old, dried-out decay, hovering in the doorway as though the very air had long since drowned it. Something under the hood moved as if inhaling, and Yukina's back burned like sunburn, a faded echo of Tarukane's frustrated and enraged whipping -- 

She reached out and caught at the folds of not-quite-real cloth, two fingers hooked in over the creature's nonexistent heart, and let the Void go.

It froze over instantly. A coat of frost shimmered at its tatterings; a lump of lacy ice under Yukina's hand honeycombed through its core. The sudden weight nearly snapped her wrist, and she let go only for it to shatter at her feet.

Outside, a second shadowy figure abruptly turned tail and flew away, pursued by something shining silver. Quickly, Yukina stepped over the remains of her Dementor and peered out the doorway, glancing at the last compartment. The shabby man stepped out, worry stark on his scarred face and the scent of wolf and recent wounds clinging to him.

"What was that?" Yukina asked, voice barely more than a whisper as the icy cold retreated.

"Dementor. One of the guards of Azkaban-- are you all right?" Yukina nodded, but the man handed her a lump in a bit of foil anyway. "Eat this, you'll feel better. I'm going up to speak to the driver." _And send the rest of the things scattering_ , something in his tired eyes seemed to say.

Yukina nodded and bobbed her head, unable to bow in case he looked over her into the compartment and noticed the lumps of blackened ice already starting to melt. "Thank you, sir." He hurried onwards, and she retreated into her compartment and looked over the remains with a sigh.

Well. Now what was she going to do with this mess...?

Eventually, she disposed of the Dementor chunks out the window, one at a time as the train approached Hogwarts, except for one from the core that she refroze and buried in her trunk.

 

-0-0-0

 

The platform was a mess of screeching cats and hooting owls, and teenagers yelling like they hadn't just spent eight hours among each other to visit with, and all this was in the dark and driving rain.

"Firs' years! Firs' years this way!" a man nearly three times the size of the milling children bellowed, nothing but a thick dark beard visible from inside a raincoat like a tent, handheld lantern swaying overhead under a bright pink umbrella. "All righ', you three?" he called to someone in the crowds, but Yukina couldn't see who. "C'mon, then, any more firs' years? Mind yer step now! Firs' years, follow me!"

What was probably a narrow path in good weather was little better than a muddy stream now, and Yukina was one of the few people who didn't slip to her knees in it. Only the giant man's swinging lantern gave any light, a pool of it glinting off sodden mossy tree trunks to either side and sending everyone's shadows wavering as if the dark was alive and trying to hide your footing on purpose.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts jus' round this bend here."

There was a ragged but still awed "Ooooooh".

The castle itself was all but impossible to see, but hundreds of warmly-lit windows glimmered cheerfully across a broad lake, sketching in the shapes of dozens of towers and galleries.

"Four to a boat!" and a gesture from the giant's pink umbrella pointed them at a fleet of small boats, each with a single lamp at the bow and a charmed bucket bailing water out of the bottom. The giant took a boat for himself, and Yukina clambered into another behind a broad-shouldered girl in beaded microbraids, who was pushing the back of a floating, legless chair with another girl in it, and a gangly black boy who barely caught a toad that jumped out of his pocket at the water. "Everybody in? FORWARD!"

Fortunately, the boat ride was short, and since everyone was huddled under trying to keep some parts of themselves dry, they barely had to duck when the giant told them to watch their heads and the boats glided under a trailing curtain of ivy.

They sailed down a long, dark tunnel for several blissfully dry minutes, then the boats beached themselves on a pebble shore and they all clambered out. The pebbles petered out after a couple of meters, the ground rising sharply beneath their feet and up a long passageway. It twisted and turned, and after a sharp bend they finally reached a flight of stone steps, lit with flaming torches now that the footing was certain.

At the top of the stairs stood a tiny old man with twinkling eyes and tufts of white hair sticking out from under a pointed hat nearly as tall as he was. The children near the front hesitated when they reached eye level with him, and thus blocked the way for everyone else.

"The firs' years, Perfessor Flitwick."

"Thank you, Hagrid." He sent the giant back down towards the boats with a nod of his head, then smiled at the dripping and nervous crowd. With a flick of his wand, the air around them all warmed and their clothes began to steam gently. "A bit of a Drying Charm, hm? There we go. Welcome to Hogwarts! We'll be starting the feast shortly, but first we'll have a little ceremony to sort you into your Houses. The Sorting is important because, while you're here, your House will be like your family. You'll eat together, share the same dorms and classes, cheer for your House teams... and of course, doing well will earn your House points, while rulebreaking will lose them. At the end of the year, the House with the most points wins the House Cup, a great honor.

"The four Houses are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. Each has a long and noble history, and great witches and wizards have come from every House in approximately equal number. So do your best, and don't be nervous -- every student waiting to meet you has been in your shoes too.

"I'll be back for you in a few minutes. Best use the time to tidy up a bit, you'll have plenty of time to meet each other once the feast starts!" And with one last smile -- and another flick of his wand at a boy whose drying hair was frizzing up dreadfully, calming the wild curls -- he trotted off and into the Great Hall.

As most of the kids squeezed water out of their hair and picked the worst of the mud off their socks and robes, Yukina began to fingercomb and retie her pigtails, only to get an elbow not-so-roughly jabbed against her arm.

"What's with your hair?" the girl asked brashly, fingering her own long curls.

"... Accidental magic," Yukina murmured. "I was very young and this is my favorite color."

The girl hmmphed a little. "Well you're lucky you didn't ruin it worse. At least it goes with your complexion. Makes your eyes look almost red, though." She eyed Yukina up and down. "Best hope you don't get Sorted Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. You want a good blue or green to work with."

"I'll keep that in mind, thank you," Yukina said, not unkindly. She was pretty sure whatever Sorted them wasn't going to do so based on color coordination, though.

Professor Flitwick returned, a shower of sparks fountaining over his head to catch their attention, and led them into the Great Hall. Once through the doors, Yukina could see four long tables crowded with students, brightly-colored banners over each and an initialed crest on the wall at the far end, behind a fifth table where the professors sat. Long white candles floated overhead, so many that it was nearly as bright as a normal elegant restaurant, and although they didn't have holders, a few dribbles of wax pooling around the bases already showed there was no need to worry about drippings.

It took a moment for Yukina to realize that the odd quality to the ceiling behind the candlelight was that there wasn't one. Or, rather, it was invisible, a gaping hole with flickering wavery reflections where the heavy rain was sheeting down the roof. It would probably be... nice, if you liked ruins... when the weather was clearer, but right now it wasn't very interesting, so Yukina looked back at the room itself.

Professor Flitwick stepped up onto the teachers' dais, next to a simple wooden stool with a badly-patched old leather hat on it, and pulled out a scroll as the first-years jostled each other to see.

A rip in the brim opened, and the hat began to sing in a rough, raggedy old voice.

_When round the land great fears lurked dark,_  
and magic held to few and far,  
four mages of old did come to remark:  
"We need a haven," said one, "a grand teaching hall,   
a beacon of hope to light ways for all!"   
"Agreed and agreed!" said bright Ravenclaw, and:   
"We must start with the wise, the sharpest of mind."  
"Do as you like," replied Slytherin.   
"I'll take in the cunning, the coolest of nerve."  
"A faint start for all that!" bellowed Gryffindor bold,   
"I'll then have the brave, the strongest of heart!"  
And then, oh then, did Hufflepuff laugh!   
"I'll take in them all, and find merit in will!" 

The song ended abruptly, enough so that it was a good thirty seconds before the students realized and gave their applause.

Professor Flitwick cleared his throat, and the applause died down. Then he called out, "Aitken, Conway!" A freckled and sturdily-built little boy walked nervously up to the stool, where the short professor levitated the hat onto his head. After about a minute, "Hufflepuff!" the hat shouted, and the boy's tie and robe linings turned a vibrant golden yellow.

"Arkwright, Laurena," became a Gryffindor, then "Brewster, Veronica" -- the sleek-haired girl in the floating, legless chair, which hovered over the stool instead of transferring her onto it -- became another Hufflepuff. Several students later, "Easom, Meredith," became the first Slytherin. "Everett, Erskine," went to Ravenclaw, then "Greengrass, Astoria" to Slytherin, and then it was Yukina's turn.

"Hyoga, Yukina!"

Yukina slipped out of the crowd, climbing the two steps up to the stool, and caught just the quickest glimpse of a sea of faces before the Hat's brim fell down over her eyes. The thick scent of old leather and dirt nearly made her sneeze.

_Well now. You're a bit older than my usual audience, I think._ The same rough old voice seemed to be murmuring from inside her head. _Makes this a little difficult. Life experience deepens the personality, enhances some parts and leaves others to wither, you understand. But... let's see, you've a great wisdom, though I'd hardly say it's beyond your years, hm? Abnormally high ambitions, or so you think; you in fact are only a little bit curious, and quite empathic, and so what you think are ambitions are simple goals with no need for power to accomplish. But you have a deep well of courage, strong and vibrant as any I've seen... but not the challenging roars of the lion. No. Your strength is that of the badger, which digs in deep and refuses to be swayed. You, young-but-ancient one, are a_ "HUFFLEPUFF!"

The girl who'd asked about her hair made a sympathetic face as Yukina headed over to the Hufflepuff table.

The M's brought a run of new Hufflepuffs to the table -- Crispin with his tie askew and collar wrinkled; Jarred, an Indian boy with a broad grin; and Danielle "call me Dani", who pulled a dogeared tarot deck from her pocket and introduced it as "my familiar, Dichotomy". (And then kicked a second-year in the ankle when he sniggered.)

Eventually, "Vane, Romilda," the girl who disliked Yukina's hair, went to Gryffindor, then "Walters, Nainsi" and "Wemblick, Sydney" went to Slytherin, and lastly "Winton, Stuart" joined Yukina in Hufflepuff.

A tall, imposing woman in green entered the hall with two younger students as Flitwick took the Hat and stool away. The students hurried over to the Gryffindor table, the woman took a seat next to the colorful old man in the grand chair at the center of the professors' table -- Headmaster Dumbledore, Yukina guessed, the name had been on her acceptance letter -- and said colorful old man stood to look out over the students, beaming fondly at them all.

"Welcome!" he said, arms wide and eyes bright. "Welcome to another year at Hogwarts! I have a few things to say to you all, and as one of them is very serious," his face and eyes didn't sober at all, which Yukina found worrying, "I think it best to get it out of the way before you become befuddled by our excellent feast...." 

He cleared his throat, and now he sobered. "As you will all be aware after the search of the Hogwarts Express, our school is presently playing host to some of the Dementors of Azkaban-- " Some, not all. Yukina stifled a sigh. Well, they had told her she was in it for the long haul... a Ministry career until she could get access to the cursed place. "-- who are here on Ministry of Magic business."

"'at bloody Sirius Black," a second-year whispered to ashen-faced little Kaiya Esumi, next to Yukina. "'e's after Harry Potter, you know," he added with a jerk of his head towards the Gryffindor table."

Kaiya shot a tired glare at him. "We're not idiots," she hissed back.

"They are stationed at every entrance to the grounds," Dumbledore added, "and while they are with us, I must make it plain that nobody is to leave school without permission. Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks or disguises -- or even Invisibility Cloaks. It is not in the nature of dementor to understand pleading or excuses." Well, it wouldn't be. They were a disease. "I therefore warn each and every one of you to give them no reason to harm you. I look to the prefects, and our new Head Boy and Girl, to make sure that no student runs afoul of the Dementors.

"On a happier note, I am pleased to welcome two new teachers to our ranks this year.

"First, Professor Lupin, who has kindly consented to fill the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher." The applause was scattered and weak, rather rude, though it did occur to Yukina that it could just be an unpopular class... or that the previous teacher might've been well-liked or come to a bad end. "As to our second new appointment... Well, I am sorry to tell you that Professor Kettleburn, our Care of Magical Creatures teacher, retired at the end of last year in order to enjoy more time with his remaining limbs." Oh dear. "However, I am delighted to say that his place will be filled by none other than Rubeus Hagrid, who has agreed to take on this teaching job in addition to his gamekeeping duties."

The Hall seemed to explode with applause, turning the giant professor from the boats bright red and grinning shyly.

"Well, I think that's everything of importance," Dumbledore finished. "Let the feast begin!"

Their empty plates and goblets sparkled, then filled with meat and potatoes -- nearly half a dozen varieties of each -- peas and carrots, two colors of sauce, and some sort of bread that, when Yukina bit into it, tasted savory and crackling. Little bowls of black-and-white striped candies stood dotted among the dishes, and Yukina thought they were meant to be dessert until the actual dessert course did appear: pies and cakes, doughnuts and puddings, some sort of towering glass bowl of fruit-studded gelatin covered in cubes of cake and a handspan of whipped cream, smaller bowls of just the bright gelatin, and strawberries.

Yukina took the strawberries and nibbled at them slowly, waiting for things to wind down. It took a long time -- everybody, it seemed, was keyed up -- but finally, a few of the other new first-years started to droop, and a pair of upperclassmen cajoled them out of their seats. "Come on, we'll show you to the dorms," the boy said.

It didn't take long to leave the Great Hall and -- going down one staircase and through a tapestry, then down a winding hall -- reach a stack of ancient barrels, five rows high and reaching very nearly to the ceiling. The upperclass girl reached past Dani's head with her wand, pointing at a barrel in the middle of the second row, then tapped it in matching rhythm while murmuring "Helga Hufflepuff," then "remember that, if you get the rhythm wrong you'll get doused in vinegar."

The barrel opened, widening to allow them all to walk through without ducking, and led them into a cosy, low-ceilinged room, all round windows that were currently dark from the night. Fires blazed cheerfully in fireplaces between the windows, and there were plants everywhere, a few humming sleepily to themselves.

"Welcome to Hufflepuff," the upperclass boy said, smiling. "I'm Cedric Diggory, a prefect in my fifth year. This is Kelley Lewin." The girl waved. 

"Now, you might've heard Hufflepuff's a lot of duffers. That we'll take anybody. That we're the House for people who don't have anything special about them. And that's wrong. We're the least boastful House, but we're just as good as any other. We've got Ministers and explorers, singers and Arithmancers, and even the guy who founded the village of Hogsmeade. People just go assuming that anyone who's brilliant in what they think their own House is about... well, that they couldn't possibly be a Hufflepuff, since we're the House that'll take anybody. What they don't get is that means we're the House that'll _fit_ everybody... except Dark wizards. Turns out that's what we've got the fewest of. We have to learn to play fair and be friends with people who aren't all the same, see.

"You've seen how to get in here, and that'll always be the way to do it. No mucking about with dodgy passwords or riddles that anybody with a bit of brainpower can solve -- it's practically a rite of passage for the Gryffindors to break into Ravenclaw their seventh year, and if any of you happen to find the camera hidden over behind the back panel of the third bookshelf with the photo albums on it, no one here of course has any idea that the Gryffindor sevenths almost always go riddle-hunting after a big Quidditch win. Funniest pictures get in the albums.

"Our House ghost is the friendliest of them all: the Fat Friar's very distinctive and always good for advice or if you get lost. Professor Sprout's our Head of House, she teaches Herbology and is a good sport. You'll have to _really_ muck up on purpose to get in trouble with her. I think that's nearly everything...?" He glanced at Kelley, who shook her head with a distinct air of 'boys!'.

"The boys' dorms are through that door," she said, pointing to a round door on the left side of the room, then on the right side, "and those are the girls'. Miss Ravensown, you're in the girls'. Each side of the dorm has its own bathroom, with individual shower stalls and communal tubs, and if they're all being used the castle will just make more, so don't worry about having to wait in line. There's a prefect study room through that door," she pointed to an angled wall with a smaller door, a sign painted with 'PREFECTS' on it. "There'll be someone in there between dinner and curfew every night except during Quidditch. I won't guarantee it'll be me or Cedric -- there are four more of us, they're out looking for stragglers til ten tonight -- but we're all here to help you out, okay? 

"All our meals are in the Great Hall, which is where we had the feast and Sorting. It's right down the hall, through the tapestry, and up the stairs, except on Fridays when it's left down the hall. Breakfast runs from seven til eight-thirty, and lunch is from noon to one. You don't have to be at either of those the entire time. Dinner is at six, you _do_ have to be at that one until you're dismissed, and curfew is at nine for under third year and ten after that, except for Astronomy class. We'll have bed checks at ten under third year and eleven for fourth.

"Class schedules will be passed out at breakfast tomorrow morning. If you get there early enough, you'll have enough time to come back here and get the right books before class. If you sleep in a bit, you'll have to carry all your books for the first day, so I suggest you get up bright and early!

"There's an announcement board next to the prefect study room. Keep an eye on it, it'll tell you about different clubs and tryouts, volunteering for extra credit, and the occasional party. The game closet is next to that, but it only unlocks itself in bad weather or after all the players have done their homework. The trade-off's that there's no chores. Between the castle staff and upper-years learning housework charms for when they have their own place, all you have to do is make sure your laundry lands in the hampers, okay?

"Professor Sprout will be coming by to check in with you personally every weekend for the first month, and then we have monthly appointments with her unless there's an emergency. If you're not feeling well, we'll bring you by the Infirmary, though, so be sure to tell us even if it's just a cold. Everybody ends up catching those in the winter; the whole House can end up smelling like Pepper-Up Potion if the colds run through during exams.

"So _now_ that's it. If you've got any questions or don't really remember what we've been saying -- I know it's late and most of us are dozing off -- there should be a booklet with reminders in your nightstands. And that's it! Girls, come with me; boys, with Diggory. It's bedtime."

The first door through the entrance to the girls' dorms ("never take the first" Hiei grumbled again in her memory) had a carved copper plaque reading FIRSTS on it, and inside was a vaulted round room, six curved sections with a fieldstone pillar in the middle, a hearth full of banked coals glowing low inside it. Four-poster beds in each section except the door's had black-bordered patchwork quilts on them, mostly in yellows but with a few hints of green and red and blue in the small patterns. Their trunks were already at the foot of each bed -- Yukina's was second on the right, with her sleeping yukata out in it neat square on the corner of the quilt -- and copper lamps cast a warm glow over everything.

"Right then," Kelley said. "I'll leave you guys to make introductions and get ready for bed -- Miss Esumi, your potions are on Tuesday and Thursday night, and you have silencing and light-blocking charms on your section if you don't want to use the common room the rest of the time -- and I'll be back in half an hour for bed check."

Yukina's dorm room neighbors turned out to be Skye Ravensown (in the bed opposite the door), who had a strong but brittle grin and beaded microbraids in her hair, and Kaiya Esumi (closest to the door, though behind it when it opened), a Japanese girl with short hair and a pixie face -- "the potion thing is for insomnia. Madam Pomfrey, that's the school nurse, she said I can only have two per week and she wants me to try to nap more on the weekends". Opposite them were Dani Morales ("Well _I_ like your hair, Romilda Vane can just go hang"), and in the other bed closest the door where her floating chair would get out most easily, Veronica Brewster "Call me Ronnie, though, I hate Veronica".

They all changed for bed, passing yawns around between them, and after brushing their teeth and Kelley's bed check -- her hand pressing gently on each quilt-covered shoulder -- Yukina lay awake for a while, thinking.

Bed checks and an insomniac roommate. This was going to be harder than she'd thought.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I recieved a question on fanfiction dot net about how Yukina is going to cover up her lack of aging. I can think of several possible solutions off the top of my head (Turner Syndrome, Reikai device, environmental triggers), but I'm of the opinion that in canon she and Hiei are pubescent anyway and that puberty takes no longer than it does in humans, or at least not too notably longer, because I ship Kuwabara/Yukina and Kurama/Hiei.
> 
> Koenma was going to send her in another two years, actually, and wouldn't THAT have been a mess.

  
Morning came with bright sunlight, blue skies, and wispy clouds scudding across the painted plaster ceiling of Yukina's dorm.  
  
Kaiya was already awake, sprawled across her bed and squinting blearily at the ceiling.  
  
"Good morning," Yukina said quietly, and Kaiya groaned.  "Don't worry, I think we have plenty of time before we have to actually be up," Yukina added, as she slipped out of bed and gathered her toiletries.  "I'll be back later."  And she left Kaiya to her muttered grumbling, padding out into the hall and heading deeper into the dorms.  
  
Second years, third years, fourth years, toilets.  Fifths, sixths, sevenths, and a room labeled NEWT Studies.  Yukina frowned.  
  
... She'd heard some places in Makai didn't divide the toilet from the bath.  Was it the same here, perhaps?  
  
Yes, yes it was.  Toilets got her to a steamy, tiled room divided by a long line of ornate copper sinks and echoing with girls' voices.  Leaving her bath bucket of supplies on the sink ledge, and only getting a few half-asleep glances from older girls brushing their teeth, Yukina explored the room.  On the left, a long line of stalls with vine-lattice carved doors yielded toilets, little more than a covered hole in a box-like bench that clearly stretched the full way along the wall and hadn't had the stalls until several centuries later.  She did her business quickly, then tried the right side of the room.  
  
On that side, a series of pools looked like a natural underground hot spring, black and golden-brown stone making lagoons and ledges, all scented with something soapy rather than sulfuric.  Two of the outer ledges were in use, girls wrapped in towels and drying their hair, but the pools themselves were empty.  Perhaps it wasn't good manners to use the baths this early...?  Along the curved walls, copper showerheads and floating oilcloth curtains marked off shower stalls, and of those a good half of them in use already.  
  
Yukina shrugged to herself, then tied her hair back and showered as well.  She skipped the bath, brushed her teeth, combed her hair into the pigtails that made her look young enough, then -- watching the older girls leave clad only in the towels -- did the same rather than put her sleeping yukata back on.  
  
This time, she noticed the hallway floor outside had a line of her footprints distinct in the wavery floor.  In fact, the floor itself looked a lot like a well-used dirt path, though -- she checked the soles of her slippers -- it wasn't actually dirt and wasn't leaving a mark on her.  More security, she wondered, or just part of the ongoing theme?  Or both?  
  
Skye and Kaiya were up and half-dressed when Yukina returned, Skye poking at the lump Dani made in her bed, and Ronnie was hauling herself into her floating chair.  "Good morning, everyone.  The bathrooms seem nice."  
  
Kaiya bounced onto Dani's feet, getting a bleary grumpy glare.  "You try the baths?  They've got different bubbles and things in each pool."  
  
"I didn't," Yukina replied, starting to get dressed as well.  "Maybe in the evening, I wasn't sure it was okay this early."  
  
"Was okay at three in the morning."  But Kaiya seemed to notice how silly that comment was, as she turned away and pulled the covers off Dani.  "Up and at 'em, sleepyhead!  First day of _magic_!"  
  
"'M up, 'm UP."  Dani threw a pillow vaguely towards them (it bounced limply on the floor), then somehow dragged her clothes on, ran her fingers through her short hair, and popped a stringy candy in her mouth just in time to head out with them.  
  
"Don't you want to brush your teeth?" Skye asked.  
  
"Toothflossing Stringmints," Dani replied, a little garbled around the things moving in her mouth.  "Found a candy shop in Diagon.  Wow this feels weird."  
  
"Looks pretty weird too," Skye said, and then they spilled out into the Entrance Hall.  At the traffic juncture where the two downstairs and two upstairs dorms converged before the doors, there were a pair of identical redhead upper-years in Gryffindor red doing a brisk business in still _more_ candy.  (This was getting ridiculous, Yukina thought.)  
  
"Oi, oi, none--"  
  
"--of that now!" one said after the other, grabbing a green-clad boy out of the crowd and frog-marching him to the Great Hall doors, nevermind that he was a head taller than them both.  
  
"Authentic goods only!" they chorused as they half-threw him inside.  Then they turned back to their customers with bright, wolfish grins.  "Last call for Early Birds!  Ladies, try an Early Bird?" and one held out a boxful of shivering candy eggs.  
  
"What are they?" Dani asked, peering at the bright speckled shells.  
  
"Little swarm of malt chocolate birds.  Hatch in your mouth, not in your hands."  
  
Just then, a Ravenclaw girl shrieked as her head was enveloped in writhing brown and beige candy worms.  
  
"... Of course every few eggs aren't actually _birds_..." the twin admitted, unrepentant.  
  
"Last box, Gred!"  
  
"Free samples for cute firsties, Forge!" 'Gred' shot back.  
  
"Carry on, then!"  
  
Dani gave the eggs one more long look.  "... They're all worms, aren't they."  That only got them a broader grin.  "We'll take the lot."  
  
"Atta girl."  And Gred plopped the box into Dani's hands.  "Fred and George Weasley, Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, for all your pranking needs.  Keep an eye out for us, hm?"  And he tipped an imaginary hat to the five of them, linked his arm with his twin's, and they hauled each other merrily into the Great Hall for breakfast.  
  
Yukina swallowed thickly and followed, towed along in her dormmates' wake.  
  
Once inside the Great Hall, Yukina discovered the dorm's morning sunlight had been meant as an alarm clock, not a view of the weather.  The actual sky was mostly gray, low-scudding clouds broken up by paler patches that promised a long sunless day, and in the diffuse light Yukina could see the barest outline of transparent rafters.  It made the ceiling considerably more impressive, that hint that it wasn't just a missing roof and several weather-repelling charms.  If there was such a thing.  
  
The serving platters were already full and steaming when Yukina and the others sat down.  Bowls of fluffy, slightly shiny scrambled eggs sat next to mountains of bacon; an actual cauldron held porridge, thick and beige instead of the bright white Yukina was used to; more plates held sausage, fried potatoes, fried tomatoes, mushrooms, and bread.  There was plenty of hot black tea in white pots and hot chocolate in brown ones, pumpkin juice in glass carafes, and...  
  
"Oh, kippers!"  Finally, something _familiar_ : tiny silvery smoked fish, butterflied open.  Yukina took several, and the porridge (chewy and a little bit nutty-sweet, but what could you do), and tea.  
  
Professor Hagrid came in swinging some sort of limp weasel in one hand and headed past the Gryffindor table, as Cedric came by theirs with a stack of loose parchments.  
  
"Morning guys!  Here's the firsts' schedules," he set half the stack next to one of the first-year boys, "and here's the seconds'!  But back to the firsts.  You'll notice, you have the same schedule as all your yearmates.  Third year's when you'll get electives and have to be responsible for your own schedule, but stick together and make sure at least one of you keeps track of a copy this year and next, and you'll be fine.  Directions to classes are on the back.  Have fun, and lucky firsties, sleep well.  See you at lunch!"  
  
Sleep well?  Yukina checked the schedule.  "I don't see any mornings off on this...?"  
  
Yukina figured out about five minutes into their first class exactly what Cedric had meant.  The History professor -- no typical unappeased ghost, even more so than the House ghosts that had attended the Sorting Feast without comment -- had gone so far opposite angry that his peacefulness was well on its way to being a... what did they call it in those games Genkai had?  An area effect.  Didn't seem to work as well on Yukina... though maybe it was that she was technically a lot older... and more experienced with appeasements...  
  
Ronnie's head thumped onto her open textbook and she began snoring, the last holdout in the class besides Yukina.  
  
 _Must -- not -- sleep_ \---  
  
One hand crept up to her locket.  What if she tried taking it off...?  Yukina fumbled at the clasp, shaking her head roughly, and got it off just in time.  The monotone and sleepiness was still there, the latter hovering at the edge of her perception, but now it felt like badly-mumbled and possibly drunken Buddhist chanting.  She could resist that.  If she had something to occupy herself with.  
  
Taking notes, of course, wasn't going to work.  Everyone else was asleep, though, so they wouldn't see...  
  
She took out her nicest piece of parchment, a bottle of blue ink, and the best of the quills from the handful she'd grabbed this morning.  The quill -- trimmed and charmed to write more like the thinnest of the calligraphy brushes Yukina was used to -- felt oddly delicate in her hand.  
  
 _Dearest Kazuma,_  
  
 _Like the migrating birds, I, too, felt the new coolness of the lingering evenings, and have had to take to the clearing sky, following the late maidenflowers.  Sadly, I seem to have arrived during the first autumn storm; it has been raining steadily since long before I set foot here, and already I have been soaked to the bone several times._  
  
 _I miss you deeply already.  I miss all my friends, of course, but except for Genkai I don't see them nearly as often as I see you.  I don't think I'd realized how brightly you shine until I had several dozen more people than Yuusuke to compare to.  Not that the people here are unkind, for the most part, and those who don't seem very pleasant have no reason to notice me, but the only two who compare are twins and never apart.  You can perhaps imagine how difficult it is to see them in the halls or at meals... though my brother may look nothing like me, much less want anything to do with me._  
  
 _I know you do not get along well with Hiei, but if he returns with news of my brother, could you please convince him to write me?  I won't insist that he come to visit -- I am not sure he'd be safe if he came,_   
  
She paused, suddenly picturing Kazuma's reaction -- or Hiei's or Yuusuke's, though perhaps not Kurama -- if they thought she was somewhere they wouldn't be safe.  And none of them had the Void to protect themselves with.  
  
A bit of scraping with the quill knife erased that last sentence passably.  
  
 _to write me?  Or, at least, to get all the information before he comes looking?  It will save him considerable time to actually know where he's going._  
  
 _Please give my regards to our friends, and assure them I'll write to them soon._  
  
 _Sincerely,_  
 _Yukina_  
  
After that, Herbology woke everyone up nicely, fresh air and practical work brushing the History professor's area effect aside like a broom through cobwebs.  They repotted black-stemmed Moly flowers with their grandmotherly Head of House, and Yukina resolved to get a cutting to send to Kurama sometime closer to spring planting.  Then came lunch -- pasties, sandwiches, apples, and cheese, with more tea and chocolate and pumpkin juice -- and then Transfiguration, where an imposing woman named Professor McGonagall turned her desk into a goat and back, lectured them for twenty minutes, and then set them to turning matchsticks into needles.  (Which nobody quite got right, though Yukina had a passable needle of something almost like the bone she was used to.)  
  
Then they had nothing to do til dinner.  
  
"... Do you think there's somewhere here I could send a letter from?" Yukina asked.  
  
"Should be an Owlery," Ronnie replied easily.  "Opposite from the lake and away from the main buildings.  Dad says you always want to put yourself lakeside in winter and the owls there in summer, because of how the air goes, but nobody's here in summer.  So it's probably that short tower there," and she pointed out the window and between the two halves of the school, where there was indeed a tower jutting out at the end of a corridor to nowhere else.  
  
"Thank you!"  Yukina took a step that way, then paused.  She had more than just the letter to mail, didn't she.  "... I'm going to run get my letter," she said, even though it sat folded and ready in her pocket, "and then we can meet somewhere?  Unless you have mail to send already as well."  
  
"Down by the lake," Skye suggested.  "We won't have nice weather like this for most of the year, we should explore outside while we can."  
  
"... Are you sure that's safe?"  Just how well did the Plague do in sunlight?  There hadn't been a lot about that in her files...  
  
"Must be.  There's classes outside, isn't there?  And they're not allowed on the grounds, Dumbledore said."  
  
"If you're sure..."  
  
"Go on."  Kaiya waved her off.  "I know I wasn't thinking about writing til the weekend.  I mean, what's there to say yet?  'Made it here, need a camera'?  ... Actually, that's probably exactly what I'll write, I'd never manage to describe anything good enough..."  
  
Yukina just barely kept herself from bowing before she turned and hurried away, hearing the others chime in with their own reasons as she left.  
  
Once back in her dorm, she grabbed the chunk of flash-frozen Plague out of her trunk and scribbled a quick note, before bundling it up in the parchment and heading back up to the Owlery.  
  
 _Dear Botan,_  
  
 _Omitting the opening remarks.  Enclosed please find a sample for Martha.  If it regenerates or causes any other kind of problem, be aware there are some several dozen more along the east side of the train tracks south of Hogsmeade that will need to be taken care of, and that I'll need to know if I have to take the same precautions while working here._  
  
 _Regards,_  
 _Yukina_  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
When they entered Defense on Friday, the entire room smelled slightly of wolf but nothing of youkai.  Yukina sniffled as she sat down -- yes, wolf, and no, definitely nothing of home.  How odd.  
  
"Wands out, books away!" Professor Lupin called out cheerfully, waving his wand to shut the door.  "As you know, I'm Professor Lupin, and you're my first-year Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws.  Reply 'here' when I call your name, and then we'll get started.  Aitken, Conway?"  
  
One by one, he called roll, eyes landing on and cataloguing each child before going on to the next, and soon enough he put the parchment away.  
  
"All right, then.  Let's just get the big question everyone's been asking out of the way first."  His kindly smile didn't waver.  "Dementors!  Sixth year material, so we'll just hit the highlights.  Anybody trying to sell you Dementor repelling items of any kind are after your money, as there's no such thing as Dementor-repelling objects."  Dani winced; just last night, she'd bought a charmed snaggly root from the Slytherin boy the Weasley twins had tossed into the Great Hall the morning before. "There is a spell, but it's only taught standard in Auror training-- that's after Hogwarts.  If you do get too close to one, you'll feel cold, shaky, and hollow inside, often like you've just had a horrible nightmare.  The best defense against them is to avoid them entirely, and the only treatment is chocolate.  If you've noticed, we're including pots of hot cocoa at meals, which is usually only for holiday feasts.  I highly recommend having chocolate for dessert at dinner as well, to help you guys sleep better at night, and if you have a bit of pocket money you might find some of the prefects are willing to pick up a bit extra at Honeyduke's on Hogsmeade weekends, or there's always owl order.  
  
"That said, let's get on to business.  Today we're learning the Wand-Lighting Charm.  Difficult to defend against the dark if you can't see what you're doing.  The incantation is _Lumos_ , and let's repeat after me..."  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
Very little occurred over the weekend.  It was spent mostly exploring the castle, with no opportunity for Yukina to shake her dormmates and do her job.  Hopefully that would change as they settled in and developed their own interests and schedules, but Yukina had the sinking feeling that Hufflepuff might've been the worst choice when it came to getting time alone.  
  
That said, the castle itself was a charming, quirky maze of staircases, winding corridors, and tapestries.  There were walls pretending to be doors, doors pretending to be walls, suits of armor that wandered about when no one was looking, portraits whose occupants wandered about when people were looking, staircases that had trick stairs or went to entirely different floors than you'd think, and an atrium where the stairs would randomly move.  
  
It took several hours and the discovery of the Astronomy Tower's observation platform to figure out that there was a bit of organization to the castle at all.  It was essentially split into two interlinked buildings; one side, surrounded by courtyards, held the Great Hall, Entrance Hall, the atrium of moving staircases, and the Hufflepuff dorms.  Yukina figured that, unless the other Houses had secret passages to the other building, their dorms were in the same residential half.  
  
The other building, a great square surrounding a courtyard, had the classrooms, the library, a lot of unused corridors and classrooms, and for some reason the infirmary was on this side too.  That last location seemed counterintuitive, until the route to Yukina's first Potions class led her right past it before winding deep into the dungeons.  
  
She'd seen the sour, black-clad man at meals, glaring daggers at Professor Lupin and the Gryffindor table alike, but hadn't yet gotten his name.  Apparently, according to her schedule, this was Professor Snape.  
  
When the classroom was full, he flicked his wand and the door fell shut with a hollow, jail-like thud, and half the class jumped.  
  
"Wands away," he ordered, quiet and lethal, and Yukina bit her lip as he called out roll in that same controlled voice.  She couldn't help it.  There was just so much like Hiei in him, from the black to the sour grumpiness to the quiet restrained danger in his voice... and yet, that sense of impending drama, the delicate ticking of quill across parchment as he listed names, that was all Kurama.   
  
"You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion making," Snape purred, as hypnotic as Hiei's Jagan.  "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic.  I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses..." _I must not giggle at my professor._   "I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death -- if you aren't a big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."  
  
And just like that, the illusion popped.  
  
"A Cure For Boils," he snapped, wand suddenly pointing at the board and chalk scribbling itself up.  "Directions are on the board.  What are you waiting for?  Begin!"  
  
"I see what they mean," Kaiya said later in the bathroom, all ten of them -- Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws -- trying to wash the smell of Pugnous Onions from their hands before lunch.  "The man's terrifying!"  
  
Amidst the chorus of agreements -- one Ravenclaw shrilly exclaiming "He's a _nightmare_!" -- Yukina could only think, _I've seen worse_.  
  
  
-0-0-0  
  
  
 _It'd been a gray Sunday morning, snow heavy on the budding plum branches and the kitchen still smelling ever-so-slightly of chocolates boxed up and waiting to be delivered, and Kurama had insisted she share from his own box over tea._  
  
 _"It hardly seems fair for you to go to the effort and then not have any for yourself," he'd murmured, and she heard_ I, too, remember how hard food is to get in Makai _._  
  
 _Small talk and tea, sharp green to refresh the palate between chocolates, and as the sky darkened and snow began to fall, Kurama turned to watch the tiny flakes drift down.  "Hiei told me, once, how he moves so quickly he seems to flicker."_  
  
 _"Oh?"_  
  
 _The corner of Kurama's mouth quirked upwards, but he didn't glance her way.  "Mostly because he knows I can't do it," he explained, "Or block it."  So it was safe to tell_ me _.  "You know his nature's fire."_  
  
 _The tea went bitter in her mouth.  "Mm," she'd agreed.  Small, fire-natured, with her red eyes... only they weren't really.  She'd hoped, when she'd asked him to go looking... but he would've admitted it, if he was her brother.  He was too blunt not to._  
  
 _"Apparently, if you're sensitive enough -- he said 'not an oblivious moron', of course -- and have the right nature, you can sense hot and cold spots and pull yourself to them faster than you can actually run."_ Then _Kurama turned that green gaze onto her, eyes hard behind his amused little smile.  "_ He _should be teaching you this.  It could save your life someday."_  
  
  
Well after curfew on Tuesday night, with Kaiya on her sleeping potion and everyone else long since asleep as well, Yukina slipped out of her bed and padded into the common room.  
  
The room was dark, lit by only a few broken and scattered beams of moonlight through the windows; the hearth fires were down to banked ashes without a single sullen coal to see.  Even without any effort, she could feel the thin drafts of cool night air coming down the chimneys when she walked past a fireplace.  
  
She _could_ , of course, just try walking out the barrel and see what happened, but chances were she'd get nothing but a cascade of vinegar on her head and trigger an alarm in Professor Sprout's rooms.  
  
Patience.  Every Dementor here was one fewer tearing at the souls in Azkaban.  With them under Ministry control -- and wouldn't Reikai like to get _that_ spell, all the better to draw the plague out and kill it -- the students were safe from infection.  She could afford patience.  Logistics first.  
  
Yukina pulled one of the hard study chairs out into the center of the room.  Sitting down, eyes front, she let her face fall into familiar lines and spun her youki out -- lightly, _lightly_ , she wasn't trying to drop the temperature, much less bring the killing cold -- delicately trying to feel the air currents in the room.  
  
Cool drafts came from the fireplaces.  Warmth seeped from under the doors to the two dormitories.  Lingering heat in the copper lamps sent faint curls upwards from metal that would still be body-warm to the touch.  There was something almost like a pool of air just a half degree warmer across the entire floor, ankle-deep eddies unnoticeable if you weren't attuned to it.  
  
That slightly warmer air clung in the corners and piled up like pillows against dust ruffles trailing from upholstered furniture.  The plants all had spongey nodes of warmth in their pots and charmed thinly over their leaves as well, too sharply delineated and rigid to be natural.  The windows were cool and would only get icy as the year went on, and were padded with a layer of sinking cool air.  
  
The outside of the glass-- she could sense it.  
  
Yukina lost her grip on her youki, and the full weight of her power dropped onto the common room, albeit at its weakest.  The copper lamps all pinged in quick rattling bursts at the sudden temperature drop, though at least nothing else happened visibly.  
  
... Strike that, Yukina thought as she stood.  Her chair had a light layer of frost over it.  
  
She wiped it down with her handkerchief, put it back, and went to bed.  
  
She'd try again another night.  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N's -  
> \- Cure for Boils potion recipe taken from Book of Potions, not Magical Drafts and Potions, as the latter has a 33-45 minute window of "do nothing" and Snape would not pick potions that let his students have leisure time like that to run amok. Also there are grosser ingredients.


End file.
